Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system refers to a system organizing and storing an organization's electronic documents and other business-related objects and/or content. ECM system may comprise content management systems (CMS), document management systems (DMS) and data management systems. Such systems comprise various features for managing electronic documents, e.g. storing, versioning, indexing, searching for and retrieval of documents. It is appreciated that there are both dynamic and static content management systems. The difference between dynamic and static systems is the way they store files. In the static systems files are stored e.g. in a constant treelike hierarchy that defines relationships for folders and documents stored in the tree. In the dynamic systems the files may be given identifications that define their existence in the system. The location of the files is not constant, but may vary in a virtual space depending on the situation.
In the enterprise content management system, electronic objects, such as documents, are associated with metadata. “Metadata” refers to information on document's properties. For example, a creator of the file or a creation date may represent content of the metadata. In addition to the metadata, the document may also comprise version history and reference information to other documents.
As said, “metadata” refers to information on a document's properties. Metadata is composed of two parts—a definition part and a content part. The definition part of a property defines generally the type of property; client, project, customer, creator, date, etc. The definition part of a property may additionally comprise data type (such as text, number, date, time, Boolean, choose from list single-select, choose from list multi-select), sorting order, validation rules, automatic value calculation rules, access control information and other information that the system may need in association with the use of the property in question. The content part of a property on the other hand specifies the value of the metadata, i.e. which client (“BeefEaters Ltd”), which project (“BBQ party”), which customer (“Edvin Tournedous”), which creator (“John Leaderman”), which date (“20120801”). For further example, specified values for a creator of the file or a creation date represent content of the metadata. In addition, a project which the document belongs to; a client who owns the document; a type of the document (letter, assignment, publication, order etc.); name of the document are examples of the content of metadata. Despite the plural form of metadata, in this disclosure, the term metadata may also refer to a singular form. Therefore, an object being defined by “metadata” may in practice be defined by one or more pieces (i.e. property or properties) of metadata. In the present disclosure, term “properties” is used as a synonym for metadata, wherein “a property” is a piece of a metadata. Further, the term “property definition” refers to the definition part of a property, and the term “property value” refers to the content part of a property. The term “property” may refer to either the definition part or the content part, or both.
It is appreciated that an object comprises a set (i.e. collection/selection/combination) of properties. Such a set of properties may vary from object to object, meaning that each object may comprise different pieces of metadata (i.e. properties) defining such object. For example, a certain document object called “plan.doc” may comprise metadata having set of properties “name”, “creator”, “state”. Another document object called “manuscript.rtf” may comprise metadata having set of properties “name”, “author”, “publisher”, “advertiser”, “proofreader”. A certain project object called “client meeting” may comprise metadata having more than one “client” properties and properties for “date”, “project manager” and “location”. Metadata is thus a combination of properties for an object.